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ChristineR: Someone once said, ..”your profit is in your buying”. That seems to be true in a lot of our sold items. If the market will only bare about a $50 dollar price on something, then better to have bought at $5 than $22 dollars. I know it seems basic but many vendors out at those antique malls we used to have booths at still think they are doing just fine buying at $10 and selling for $20. Little do they know.
Oh by the way… you asked me months ago to let you know how the Etsy transition [cross posting would go]. Well very slowly we have cross posted about 190 items into the Etsy Store. It is the quickest by far because we primarily just do a cut and paste for now until WonderLister gets their Etsy interface completedand we do a fairly detailed Ebay listing which contains almost everything we need for Etsy listing form anyway. We have made a few sales, better than Bonanza and Truegether and the such, but not on fire. We still need to begin to work within the teams and groups, but we are also working on our Shopify Store with the WonderLister Tech team and will be going live with that not too much longer.
thought I would just let you know.Mike at MDC Galleries in Atlanta
Amen T-Satt. You can fill in the pulpit anytime.
yep.. We are all in this together and SL has been a great place to learn from, iron out the kinks and even just to get a pat on the back and words from those experienced TRS+ guys that say, get up, dust off, get over it, embrace it and keep moving forward.
In golf and business a very basic rule is to just keep the ball moving forward toward the hole! 🙂
Well put and I don’t disagree at all. Pointing out issues and helping resolve and taking about possible out comes is truly the nature of SL. While I have a corporate background, my forte’ is contemporary fine art, have a MFA degree and aught on the collegiate level. So I am by no means a corporate worker bee any longer.
So, giving an opinion on just don’t worry too much about up coming changes, go with the flow, be flexible and make the needed changes in a quick fashion seems to be inline. But there is a difference between what may this mean, what are possible solutions as compared to the old “whow is me I am doomed and can’t see how I am going to survive” approach.
I too have asked many questions on SL and gotten great feedback, help and suggestions. By no means did I mean to imply to stop inquiring, asking, seeking and reciprocating. i meant it doesn’t help to put one’s hands up on each side of your face. drop your jaw and cry, “I am doomed, I am Doomed” Ebay is killing me.Sure, I know what Ebay is doing and why. Very much so, and it doesn’t bother me, I would be doing the same. So, in different words, besides getting and seeking advice and related conversation, in the end, we will or in my opinion, should just get on with it.
A lot of time can also be lost on forums if one isn’t careful. We knew a friend who listened to Utube vids, read blogs, posted tons and she went well over a year and really never got many things listed.
Just saying.. no malice intended or implied.
“5th level of despair”… Love it. Is that anything like the 12 Elements of Turmoil?
I saw a humorus item in front of a cash register the other day. It was a small sign that read “For Complaint Dept. Pull Here”. It was attached to the round pull pin on a hand grenade. I laughed.
The cashier said everyone comments on it.
Jay, it is not just the Amazon way, it is a business approach methodology way. And as far as “eating the cost”. Think like an operations guy. Ask the question, what is causing the returns? If it is anything internal, find it and fix it.
If it is too short of a description like only having “size 42” as the only copy in the whole description box. Well check out the listing of what was returned and see if it was better described would it have maybe not been returned. Or is it better Item Specifics or if one can’t figure it out then sure, maybe, eat it and move on. Once that returns are placed into ones Chart of Accounts [COA], as a line item then yes, accept it as it is IF in the relationship to the over all picture that a P&L provides you are within acceptable margins. Then account for that in the pricing structure and those loses are made up as someone replied, by adjusting prices. Sell 1500 items per year at a $1.00 higher price provides one with a $1,500 retained earnings to be applied to those misc. items. And as T-Satt mentions, if those returns are less than the $1,500 there is even more profit left over.
When we as re-sellers of vintage items are finding inventory for $5 and less and selling them at 10, 15 or even 20 times the money, then there is room to spare.
Just my opinion.
Yep… and as i said in my reply to T-Satt. Run your business like a corporation. Just do what Ebay wants and knock off the belly aching. Just “Do It”, “Gett ‘er Done” and move on with making money.
The biggest suggestion I could make to anyone who wants to really run a thriving online business is to go through the book, “Ninety Days to an MBA”. and get a grasp those principles, and then apply to your store on a smaller scale.
As Jay always says, if you want to dowse yourself with grief just go visit the Ebay forums and one can fall into the depths of gloom and despair really quick.mike in Atlanta
Right there with you T-Satt. We have had 30 day returns on our whole store for over a year and no increase in returns. Actually we don’t even get returns. Since 2002 maybe 2 or 3. Also only had 3 or 4 breakages. Nothing but 100% feedback and out of 852 feedbacks only had 1 neutral since 2002.
It is part of doing business. Back in the mfg. days we had tons of stuff stolen from the plant usually by employees, Pens, pencils, calculators, toilet paper, clip boards, not books, computer paper, ink cartridges, staples, paper clips, staplers, tape, tape dispensers, boxes, tape guns, extension cords, paper towels, soap, get the point. all of that added up to a percentage of our Sales. In retail it is called shrinkage. As online sellers we don’t have that. just some internal breakage from slippery fingers occasionally.
With such a low return rate, who cares. I will take anything back any time, even paying for shipping both ways. I know my numbers, I know my margins, I have tons of slush built into the profit margins, even offering free shipping on a lot of items and making more money now on shipping because of it.
We have been building our own Shopify Store online for months now and when we go live, we will have all these types of benefits for our customers. And just think, customers coming directly to our store without having to pay any Ebay fees at all, but we set the rules, and the policies [SOP’s] will be just as customer friendly as Ebay is trying to get us to be.
You know that the best way to get a handle on some of these numbers is to make sure one uses accounting software and pulls a bi-weekly P&L and look at the percentages. Then compare those percentages with other metrics as a baseline. I remember almost all of my percentages from the old days and if I have a slush category like shrinkage of less than 1.5% I am good to go. I also remember about two dozen other percentages and anything within those or less I know we are making good profit margins. Get those too high and out of line, then make the internal manuvers to cut back and correct, including reducing personnel.
So run our online business the same way. Just do the changes, implement, adjust and move on. Simple. Atleast no one selling on Ebay has to deal with and be responsible for hundreds of employees. You don’t know head aches until you have that number of “people” to deal with internally. After every pay day, I had dozens of people who “wan’t to see me”. Well, handling Ebay changes is a walk in the park.Mike at MDC Galleries and Fine art in Atlanta
Hay Mark: We don’t use SmartPost but both of your sizes shouldn’t be even close to having DIM weight kick in. I think I recall 1,728 CUBIC inches is the beginning of the DIM weight concern and that is 12x12x12. After 1,728 cubic inches I think that is where DIM wieghts begin and start to slowly climb from there. One of the reasons I belive Ebay stopped making the larger boxes and also why the C size box was dropped from USPS but that is just an opinion.
From what I have been reading from all you SmartPost users it seems that that postage category has been really wonkers.
mike at mdc galleries and fine art in atlanta
Oh I am on board with that. As VP of Operations I had to do tons of projections on capacity, through put, conversion, output per unit in a time span. I had to justify buying million dollar pieces of machinery and laying off personnel in order to increase output, lower unit costs and thus increase bottom line net. And the use of the word “assumptions” is totally correct. I had a clip board on 6 stop watches measuring every move a line of people made. If they took more than 3 steps in any direction it was too far and I would buy whatever it was they were “wasting time” on going to get. BUT.. then when I started to work the magic it was always using my spread sheets to play the “what if” game. What would happen if I could increase a line speed, make people move faster, bend less, talk, blink or breath less and if not what robot could I buy at what cost, to replace them with faster machinery and in return calcutate the ROI, break even point and then projection future sales, profit, growth, increased capacity which in turn lead to our sales dept. being able to go after even larger accounts which we previously could not handle.
So what I really like about the spread sheets is the ability to “play what if’s” based upon the difference between WAG and SWAG. WAG is my Wild Ass Quesses vs. my “Scientific Wild Ass Guesses”. LOL 🙂
Mark… our e-mail is mdcgalleries@gmail.com
and T-Satt.. yes my wife works with us as does a helper on Some Fridays, Sat. and Sun. And yes, it is an assembly line process, with “bottle necks” identified and those being smoothed out for consistent flow. And NO I do not use my stop watches on them. They would KILL ME!!! LOL 🙂
Mike in Atlanta
Thanks Mark: I thought I remembered seeing it. Actually going to my account in 30 minutes with all of 2017 numbers for both the corporation and personal. Corp. is due by March 15th.
The projection SS will be a topic of discussion and by using it, that will help me do some projections for next year. As of now WonderLister shows we have sold 479 items last year, avg. of 39 per month, we are at 911 total items, avg. cost of $8.61 per item with an avg. selling price of $35.32 each for a total of $16,919 [or approx. 4.1 times the money invested into inventory]for 2017 [$20,719 if shipping is included]. So now with the SS we can calculate the Sales velocity we experienced over the past several years, and do some projections to see where we need to be [purchasing wise] with all variables such as type of item, demand, interest, and other “soft” factors considered for the coming next 2 to 3 years.
Of course the margins are always able to be increased based on buying at lower costs and by increaseing sales price. Our collectible home decor items are harder to find and cost more, but about 5 years ago our cost per item was over $20 each. We have been able to get that down to $8 and change for the same if not better quality items and items that sell. But even after “donating” over a thousand itemns from the closing of those six booths we still have a lot of low selling cost items that we paid too much for.
These days we do find $8 to $15 dollar cost items that we seem to sell for about 10 times the money like T-Satt tries to do. But as we all know the sourcing is much harder and requires more knowledge than just buying a $5 box – tray lot and re-selling a dozen items. It is knowing the type of crystal, pottery, china and the type of art and prints then buy low and sell high.Hopefully with your SS we can get a handle on the quantity of inventory within a calculated aquisition cost and with the projected sales through rate figure out where we need to be to double the sales amount. Plus our other online platforms are now getting established and those will start to figure in the mix.
Mike at MDC Galleries in Atlanta
Hey Mark: Mentioning your spread sheet didn’t you post your email at one time and stated if anyone was interested to contact you and you would provide a copy? I thought you did and I book marked it but now can’t find it. I had been using Easy Auction Tracker for a few years but moved over to WonderLister years ago and then stopped using the EAT spread sheet. But WonderLister and also SixBit that T-Satt uses does not provide the type of data a good excel spread sheet does nor does it work the numbers in the way that the discussion about using these numbers for casting does.
Don’t get me wrong, the numbers needed and many financial reports are available and contained within WonderLister but the analysis of the numbers in the manner in which being discussed here would have to be gathered from WL and then a spread sheet created and formulas written for the type of analysis to do the forward projections.
So, if I was correct, then let me know how to contact you and it would be really appreciated if you are willing to share your spread sheet. It would save me a ton of time from having to go and build a copy for myself since I am no longer using the EAT spreadsheet. I have the 2017 numbers by quarter, monthly, and weekly. [date each item bought, where we bought, what we paid for ea. item, items sold ea. month, sold amount, expenses, etc., etc. but to take a few of these and take a look at velocity, projection for growth, etc. is what I am missing. Just need the sheet to date those in for an analysis.Thanks,
Mike at MDC Galleries in AtlantaGood morning:
There are a couple of things that you may wish to think about. It will help with this scenario and also in the future as well.
A couple of hints to draw a parallel between art framing and the following:
At Home Depot real wood crown molding [pine] unfinished is approx. $5-$6 per lineal foot. Now think about how much a trim carpenter / contractor would charge to install, then how much for a painter to paint and finish it. Now this mental picture is just for a cheap rough guide first. But for fun, let’s say then that when finished the crown molding may run $8.00 to $10 per lineal foot. If you have a 2’x3’=10 lineal-running feet x $$10=about $100 if it were just for the wood, finish and nailing it together. Now at the frame shop, they will make very tight, smooth mitered joints, use colored wood putty to fill any seams or small nail holes to make the finish, put on an acid free, neautral Ph protective backing-moisture barrier, add the hanging hardware. So now you may be in the $125 to $150 range.
Now add to this that a good professional frame shop will have a huge selection of frames to offer [you have seen shops wityh all those small 90 degree corner pieces hanging on the wall to select from]. Some of those nicer pieces of wood with stippled colors, gold leafing, multi-stained pieces go for much more than Home depot crown molding per lineal foot. I have seen some at $20 to $30 per lineal foot just for the frame materials.Now with many cheap art print reproductions, you will find they are framed in modern sleek metal frames that are locked together at each corner on the back with corner clamps, or spring loaded. These run about $.20 to $.25 per lineal INCH or about $3 per lineal foot. or $25 to $30 for a 2’x3′ painting, then what else you will find on the very low end prints is a plastic frame that is made from an injection molding process. These are very cheap, low end.
Now with regards to how much value an unframed painting is devalued. On the high end, nothing at all. Take a 10 million dollar painting that a foreign collector wants for his collection and you still have a 10 million dollar painting, framed or unframed. Take a low end reproduction, but done with a high resolution line count 300 dots or higher so the human eye can’t perceive it is a repro, or a Giclee’ print done with a high end inkjet printer that is worth about $50 for the art and put a $350 nice ornate frame on it and you have a big difference. I have been known to buy art at Estate Sales and then disassemble the art right on site and give the art and glass back to the owner and just take the frame. I also have done just the opposite. My wife hates when I do that. I even buy paintings on canvas, get them home, take the painting out and Gessoe over the painting I bought, sand it down and re-use it for my own art and then save the frame for something else.
Now lastly also an easy process is to just take the painting into a good professional frame shop [not Hobby Lobby or Jo Ann’s Fabrics] and talk with the shop owner. Tell him you may be thinking of having this framed and would he give you a quote to frame it professionally. He will show you some of the corner samples he has on the wall behind him, he will lay a couple down on the corners of the paiting, he will tell you the cost of that selection, pick one and have him give you a quote. Then that would be the approx. value added by anyone that would take it to a shop in the local area.
Lastly, tthere are frames that have very ornate scroll work on them, many are done with plaster or moulage clay then real gold leaf added. You may have seen frames with pieces broken off exposing white underneath in antique shops. Those could be very expensive frames and are worth money sold just as they are. A good craftsman that works with molded frames can repair broken off pieces, gold leaf over the repairs and create a $500 – $750 dollar frame. So buy old frames at flea markets, IF you know what you are buying.
Hope this helps in your decsion making process
Mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art in Atlanta.
We do the same. We use a 23 digit code. It is already pre-printed on a paper tag we attach to every item. It has coded and camoflage numbers in it and that is why we can pre-print tags and just leave a few choice blank spots. From our sku number we can tell the item number, what we paid for it, when boughtand where it is located. The balance of the numbers [camoflage] help disguise those numbers which are easily deciphered by a savey buyer. I can uncover a dealers cost many times by looking at his SKU number then I make offers accordingly.
The advantage of having these items hidden in our SKU is when we are out on the road and get offers, we used to always ask ourselves, what did we pay for that and how long have we had it. Now we know this immediately by looking at our sku and can decide if we wish to take an offer or not or if we wish to counter offer. Then if an item sells and we are out of town which happens frequently, we have our helper who lives less than a minute from us and we text her the sold sku number and she comes to our home office, goes right to the bin it is stored in, pulls out the item number and packs and ships for us [if needed].
A good internal sku number can hold a lot of information if set up properly and in advance of acquiring a lot of inventory. It is also very useful in year end close out for tax purposes and also report generation for financial questions and queries.
Mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art in Atlanta
